Adwords Acronyms, Abbreviations & Definitions

Update: This article was originally published in 2013. As you know, the web is constantly changing, which means some of the advice on this page may become out of date. For the latest digital marketing insights from the RocketMill team, please visit our main blog page.

When I started studying Adwords, my poor underdeveloped brain simply could not remember all the jargon. IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) the only occasion when anyone should have to ‘Google’ an acronym 3 times is to decipher your nephew’s texts. Whilst I’m ranting about txts and abbreviations; Mum, if by some miracle you have stumbled upon my blog, it’s not 2004 anymore, you can stop using cul8er…

Well anyway, I didn’t have a comprehensive resource to refer to when I was learning, so I hope someone finds this list of Adwords definitions useful.

Jargon

Description

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases that you want to appear for when they are searched for on Google.

Match Type

This is how keywords trigger your adverts.

Currently there 4 different match types:

Broad

Only one word in this keyword match type has to be present to trigger an ad. E.g. Dog Trainers could trigger an advert for Nike Trainers.

BMM

+Broad +Match +Modifier allows your advert to be triggered no matter the order the words are searched in so long as all words are present.

Phrase

“Phrase” match means that the searcher has to type in the words in the same order, but other words can be searched either side.

Exact

[Exact] Match means that the search term has to be typed in precisely the same before the keyword triggers your ad to be shown.

Negative Keywords

These are the searches that you don’t want to appear for.

Search Terms

The searches that actually triggered your adverts to be shown.

Ad

Advert. Also known as Ad Copy.

Headline

Must be no longer than 25 characters. This is the Blue hyperlink in Google Search results

Description Line 1

Must be no longer than 35 characters.

Description Line 2

Must be no longer than 35 characters.

Display URL

This is the URL you show on Google. This is only superficial though only the first part of the address has to be the same.

e.g. www.rocketmill.co.uk/packages/ppc could be shown as RocketMill.co.uk/AdwordsSpecialists

Dest. URL

Destination URL/Landing Page is the web address people will arrive at after they click on an advert.

Landing Page

See Above.

Ad Group

A group of Adverts & their correlating Keywords.

Avg. Pos

The Average Position your advert was shown in. (the lower the number, the higher the position on the search results)

Impr.

Impressions: The number of times your adverts were displayed on Google.

Clicks

The number of people that have clicked on your advert.

CTR

Click Through Rate = The percentage of people who saw your advert and clicked on it. Calculated by dividing Clicks by Impressions.

CPC

Cost Per Click.

Max CPC

Your bid.

Actual CPC

How much you actually paid of a click.

Avg. CPC

Average cost per click.

Default Max. CPC

Adgroup Level determined Max CPC. (This bid is only used if you have not set a keyword level bid)

Display Network Max CPC

Self-explanatory really, this is your bid on the display network.

Est. First Page Bid

Google recons you should spend more money. Look at your Quality Score before increasing your bids to their recommendations.

Est. Top Page Bid

Google recons you should spend more money. Look at your Quality Score before increasing your bids to their recommendations.

Quality Score

This is basically a score to grade how relevant your adverts and landing page are to your keywords.

Many factors go into grading this though and it is well worth reading up on.

Labels

These can be used throughout your campaigns to tag your keywords, adverts, campaigns and adgroups with useful information.